Our purpose in this article is to explore the reasons for the continued attractiveness of Simmel's thought today and to probe the contemporary affinities to his philosophical stance towards the world. Simmel anchored the ‘philosophical attitude' in the philosopher’s particularly developed disposition for Erlebnis, i.e. the unified pre-conceptual experience of each moment of reality and life, as well as in a particular mode of objectivating this experience. We provide an illustration of such an approach and its implications through Simmel's analysis (...) of ‘remoteness from oneself’ and the restlessness it entails in The Philosophy of Money. We argue that Simmel's attempt at phenomenologically unveiling the contours and depths of life moments and fragments, as well as his emphasis on constant movement, provide much reassurance to contemporary subjectivities. But his philosophical stance is also driven by a quasi-mystical yearning for the One that lies beneath and beyond the fragments. We propose an initial assessment of the main implications of such a stance by relating it to the philosophical path it opened up and by placing it in what we understand to be the new philosophical situation today. (shrink)

Quel peut-il être, le rôle de la fiction dans la (re)construction des émotions liées à l’extermination de masse? Et que se passe-t-il au juste, quand ces émotions sont réactivées à partir du point de vue d’un bourreau? En revenant sur les questions suscitées par un cas singulier et symptomatique ( Les Bienveillantes, de J. Littell), puis en examinant certaines critiques affectant la référence à la tragédie antique en relation avec la littérature du génocide, j’essaie de mettre ici en regard deux (...) types de critiques de la notion de catharsis : l’une, contemporaine, qui conduit à la remise en cause éthique des usages qui en sont faits comparant les émotions liées à l’expérience de l’extermination à celles que la tragédie est censée pouvoir provoquer ; l’autre, issue d’une tradition libertine propre au xvii e siècle, faisant planer le doute sur la nature (et la possibilité même) du processus cathartique, et sur les « scénarios paradigmatiques » que certaines tragédies mettent en branle au sein d’une mise en commun de certaines émotions. Un tel détour ne pourrait-il pas conduire à interroger, dans une perspective différente, l’impact de l’art sur notre manière d’expérimenter, de caractériser et d’évaluer des émotions telles que la Terreur et la Pitié aujourd’hui même? (shrink)

Title on spine: Marin Cureau de La Chambre.

Pour qui s'intéresse aux formes les plus subtiles de la pensée morale en Europe, ceux que l'on nomme les " moralistes " brillent d'un éclat particulièrement vif. Le moraliste se présente souvent comme " un anatomiste du cœur " OU un spectateur de la vie, non comme l'architecte d'un système ou le porte-parole d'une doctrine générale. La présente enquête collective est tout entière guidée par le souci de s'interroger sur les significations proprement historiques et politiques émanant de l'œuvre des moralistes. (...) Et cela, depuis ce moment de crise politique et morale qui fut celui de La Rochefoucauld jusqu'à l'ère du soupçon de Nietzsche et de ses successeurs : ainsi, tout près de nous, Emil Cioran et Jacques Derrida. Entre ces deux pôles, des lieux essentiels de la pensée et de l'écriture morales sont revisités en ce livre : de La Bruyère à Marivaux, de Graciàn à Vauvenargues et à Chamfort, de Diderot à Joubert. (shrink)

Les transformations des philosophies hellénistiques constituent, dans l'histoire de la pensée morale entre Renaissance et Lumières, un phénomène d'une fécondité extraordinaire, capital à beaucoup d'égards pour l'étude des "transferts" entre mondes antiques et Europe de la première modernité. Le cas du scepticisme offre de ce point de vue un terrain d'investigation de premier ordre. Or les relations entre scepticisme et pensée morale envisagées dans la longue durée et dans la multiplicité de leurs variations, entre philosophie et littérature, n'ont pas été (...) jusqu'ici étudiées avec l'attention qu'elles méritent. La présente enquête collective a pour ambition de remettre en évidence la finalité essentiellement éthique du scepticisme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Although the mapping between form and meaning is often regarded as arbitrary, there are in fact well-known constraints on words which are the result of functional pressures associated with language use and its acquisition. In particular, languages have been shown to encode meaning distinctions in their sound properties, which may be important for language learning. Here, we investigate the relationship between semantic distance and phonological distance in the large-scale structure of the lexicon. We show evidence in 100 languages from a (...) diverse array of language families that more semantically similar word pairs are also more phonologically similar. This suggests that there is an important statistical trend for lexicons to have semantically similar words be phonologically similar as well, possibly for functional reasons associated with language learning. (shrink)

Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century scientist who discovered oxygen, was one of the most remarkable thinkers of his time. This collection of essays by a team of experts covers the full range of his work in the fields of education, politics, philosophy, and theology, and firmly re-establishes him as a major intellectual figure.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

Several studies on ethical and social food attributes have shown that consumers, especially in developed countries, are willing to pay a price premium for fair trade foods products. However, there is a scant literature on how consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for fair trade products are affected by the presence of other ethical food attributes. To fill this gap, a choice experiment was conducted in Scotland, the Netherlands and France to assess consumers’ preferences and WTP for ethical attributes, i.e., (...) fairtrade, organic, and lower carbon footprint, of bananas and to find out whether this ethical food attributes are competing in real markets. The results showed that in the three countries consumers are willing to pay a price premium for the three ethical food attributes. The results showed that in the current market situation these ethical foods are not generally competing against each other. Nonetheless, they are likely to become competing for consumer’s money at least when: the price of organic foods is decreased significantly, the price for fairtrade food products is set higher than consumers’ WTP, and bananas labeled as having lower carbon footprint are made available in retail stores and sold at a price lower than consumers’ WTP. (shrink)

As intergenerational interactions increase due to an ageing population, the study of emotion-related responses to the elderly is increasingly relevant. Previous research found mixed results regarding affective mimicry – a measure related to liking and affiliation. In the current study, we investigated emotional mimicry to younger and older actors following an encounter with a younger and older player in a Cyberball game. In a complete exclusion condition, in which both younger and older players excluded the participant, we expected emotional mimicry (...) to be stronger for younger vs. older actors. In a partial inclusion condition, in which the younger player excluded while the older player included the participant, we predicted that the difference in player behaviour would lead to a difference in liking. This increased liking of the older interaction partner should reduce the difference in emotional mimicry towards the two different age groups. Results revealed more mimicry for older actors following partial inclusion especially for negative emotions, suggesting inclusive behaviour by an older person in an interaction as a possible means to increase mimicry and affiliation to the elderly. (shrink)

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.

This book offers a comprehensive presentation of the Pratyabhij philosophy (elaborated in the 10th and 11th centuries by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta) by showing how its main concepts arose from the confrontation of aiva religious dogmas ...

Depuis qu'elles existent, les sciences dites exactes se prétendent différentes des autres savoirs. Comment comprendre cette prétention? Faut-il, à la manière des épistémologues anglo-saxons ou de Karl Popper, tenter d'identifier les critères qui la justifient? Peut-on, suivant le modèle nouveau des études sociales des sciences, y voir une simple croyance? Ce livre propose un dépassement fructueux de l'opposition, apparemment irréconciliable, entre ces deux approches des sciences. Et si la tension entre objectivité scientifique et croyance était justement constitutive des sciences, enjeu (...) des pratiques inventées et réinventées par les scientifiques? Réussir à parler des sciences avec humour, sans en faire un objet de vénération, ni de dénonciation, en restant au plus proche de la passion des scientifiques, tel est ici le pari d'Isabelle Stengers. Mais ce livre ne se limite pas à un discours sur les sciences. Il s'agit bien plutôt de prolonger l'histoire de leur invention. Comment comprendre les liens multiples entre la science et les pouvoirs qui la mobilisent aujourd'hui? Comment concevoir les rapports entre science, expertise et démocratie? La nouveauté de L'invention des sciences modernes est de faire de ces différents problèmes intellectuels, pratiques et politiques les enjeux du processus par où pourrait s'inventer et se renouveler l'identité même des sciences. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. (...) Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

An innovative, multifaceted approach to scientific experiments as designed by and shaped through interaction with the modeling process The role of scientific modeling in mediation between theories and phenomena is a critical topic within the philosophy of science, touching on issues from climate modeling to synthetic models in biology, high energy particle physics, and cognitive sciences. Offering a radically new conception of the role of data in the scientific modeling process as well as a new awareness of the problematic aspects (...) of data, this cutting-edge volume offers a multifaceted view on experiments as designed and shaped in interaction with the modeling process. Contributors address such issues as the construction of models in conjunction with scientific experimentation; the status of measurement and the function of experiment in the identification of relevant parameters; how the phenomena under study are reconceived when accounted for by a model; and the interplay between experimenting, modeling, and simulation when results do not mesh. Highlighting the mediating role of models and the model-dependence of data measurement, this volume proposes a normative and conceptual innovation in scientific modeling--that the phenomena to be investigated and modeled must not be precisely identified at the start but specified during the course of the interactions arising between experimental and modeling activities. Contributors: Nancy D. Cartwright, U of California, San Diego; Anthony Chemero, U of Cincinnati; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Jenann Ismael, U of Arizona; Tarja Knuuttila, U of South Carolina; Andrea Loettgers, U of Bern, Switzerland; Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech; Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan U; Paul Teller, U of California, Davis; Michael Weisberg, U of Pennsylvania; Eric Winsberg, U of South Florida. (shrink)

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

Shavelson et al. (2023) identify an important problem in their Target article: a significant number of terminally ill patients with impaired motor function are wrongfully excluded from receiving ai...

The paper provides a new critical perspective on the propensity interpretation of fitness, by investigating its relationship to the propensity interpretation of probability. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, the claim that fitness is a propensity cannot be understood properly: fitness is not a propensity in the sense prescribed by the propensity interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation of probability is inessential for explanations proposed by the PIF in evolutionary biology. Consequently, interpreting the probabilistic dimension of fitness in terms of (...) propensities is neither a strong motivation in favor of this interpretation, nor a possible target for substantial criticism. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how argumentation schemes can be used in decision support systems that help clinicians in making treatment decisions. The work builds on the use of computational argumentation, a rigorous approach to reasoning with complex data that places strong emphasis on being able to justify and explain the decisions that are recommended. The main contribution of the paper is to present a novel set of specialised argumentation schemes that can be used in the context of a clinical decision support (...) system to assist in reasoning about what treatments to offer. These schemes provide a mechanism for capturing clinical reasoning in such a way that it can be handled by the formal reasoning mechanisms of formal argumentation. The paper describes how the integration between argumentation schemes and formal argumentation may be carried out, sketches how this is achieved by an implementation that we have created and illustrates the overall process on a small set of case studies. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (shrink)

This study brings together the analysis of a magazine for children published in a mass-circulation newspaper in a poor industrialized country. Based on a comprehensive survey of articles popularizing science, technology and health topics printed in Notícias Miudinho between 1924 and 1933, this paper intends to show how this publication tuned in with the on-going Portuguese political and educational agenda, while highlighting the idiosyncrasies of the networks involved in the publication of the magazine. In addition, and based on the analysis (...) of the magazine’s mail section, this paper questions historiographic claims about the reduced impact of the Republican education programme. At the same time, this essay intends to contribute to the discussion on the historicity of ‘popular science’ while putting in evidence the importance of understanding the particularities of the actors and networks involved locally to grasp the full extent to which science culturally permeates, mirrors and models society worldwide. (shrink)

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...) game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

Habermas est un des philosophes contemporains vivants les plus célèbres. Cet héritier de l'Ecole de Francfort a participé aux grandes controverses du XXe siècle, celle opposant Adorno à Popper, mais aussi à la querelle des historiens allemands. L'oeuvre abondante d'Habermas croise morale, sociologie, politique et épistémologie. Isabelle Aubert en découvre la profonde unité dans l'intersubjectivité, cette notion que l'on trouve chez Fichte et Husserl mais qu'Habermas s'est efforcé de détourner. Il ne s'agit pas d'éliminer toute forme de subjectivité mais (...) de déplacer la perspective sur le social en mettant au centre une notion qui appréhende la réalité de sujets situés et en relation. Ce modèle alternatif d'intelligibilité s'effectue sur le mode de la participation au dialogue, de l'échange de paroles et non selon le mode de l'observation entre un pôle de représentation et un environnement extérieur. Ainsi naît une nouvelle anthropologie sociale fonctionnelle, à l'écart du mouvement post-moderne. (shrink)

After years of the welfare state, the rise of technology, combined with neoliberal governmental apparatuses, has established a new society of the precarious. In this new way of the world, productivity is not just connected to labor in the traditional sense of work hours, but more totally, to the formation of the self: work becomes performative and affective, and personal identities seep more and more into working ones. This new mode of being has another side, however: it can lead to (...) new forms of self-organization, resistance and exodus. In it we see the emergence of a new and disobedient self-government of the precarious. (shrink)

Where do we draw the line between individual and collective responsibilities? Can collectives be „morally responsible‟ in the same way that individuals can? This paper explores the Bystander Effect – how an individual‟s sense of personal responsibility can become „diffused‟ when they become part of a collective. This is compared to the issue of the collective responsibility of the „developed world‟ to aid the „Third World‟ that ethicists, such Peter Singer and Iris Marion Young believe to be true. I consider (...) that perhaps because their theories concentrate too heavily on collective responsibility, they are rendered practically ineffectual by the phenomenon of the Bystander Effect. I suggest that this effect may be overcome if means to „infuse‟, rather than „diffuse‟, the individuals‟ sense of personal and collective responsibility are encouraged. For example, educating people of the logic of the „prisoner‟s dilemma‟ metaphor – that is, that if each individual takes their own responsibility seriously, then the collective can become more effectual. In such ways, the Bystander Effect associated with issues of global poverty could be overcome, at least to a certain extent, by moving individuals‟ focus away from feeling uninspired by their diffusion of responsibility, and towards individual responsibility being promoted in a way that makes them feel as though their combined efforts will make an effectual collective. (shrink)

The Occupy movements in 2011 – this essay focuses mainly on Spain and the United States – have been more than moments of grassroots or direct democracy: they have been collective political practices testing forms of non-representationist democracy in the Europe of representative democracy to an unusually great extent. The precarious subjects of post-Fordism rejected political representation, and at the same time they struggled for a ‘real’ democracy. This oxymoron between representation and democracy structures the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière (...) and corresponds with his well-known distinction between police and politics. This is one of the reasons why his thinking is helpful to understand them as decidedly political ones. However, the assembly as one of the central topoi of theories of democracy plays no prominent role in Rancière’s political philosophy. In contrast to this, I focus on the central practice of the assemblies in the Occupy movements and develop a concept of presentist democracy. (shrink)

This study investigates whether the market valuation of the two summary accounting measures, book value of equity and net income, is higher for firms with reputation for sustainability leadership, when compared to firms that do not enjoy such reputation. The results are interpreted through the lens of a framework combining signalling theory and resource-based theory, according to which firms signal their commitment to sustainability to influence the external perception of reputation. A firm’s reputation for being committed to sustainability is an (...) intangible resource that can increase the value of a firm’s expected cash flows and/or reduce the variability of its cash flows. Our findings are according to expectations and show that the net income of firms with good sustainability reputation has a higher valuation by the market, when compared to their counterparts. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a notable increase in the production of scientific expertise by large multidisciplinary groups. The issue we address is how reports may be written by such groups in spite of their size and of formidable obstacles: complexity of subject matter, uncertainty, and scientific disagreement. Our focus is on the International Panel on Climate Change, unquestionably the best-known case of such collective scientific expertise. What we show is that the organization of work within the IPCC aims to make (...) it possible to produce documents that are indeed expert reports. To do so, we first put forward the epistemic norms that apply to expert reports in general, that is, the properties that reports should have in order to be useful and to help decision-making. Section 2 claims that these properties are: intelligibility, relevance and accuracy. Based on this analysis, section 3 points to the difficulties of having IPCC reports indeed satisfying these norms. We then show how the organization of work within the IPCC aims at and to a large extent secures intelligibility, relevance and accuracy, with the result that IPCC reports can be relied on for decision-making. Section 4 focuses on the fundamentals of IPCC’s work organization--that is, division of labour within the IPCC--while section 5 investigates three frameworks that were introduced over the course of the functioning of the IPCC: the reviewing procedure of IPCC reports, the language that IPCC authors use to express uncertainty and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Concluding remarks are offered in section 6. (shrink)

En este artículo se examina la común estrategia metódica de los estudios sobre la discapacidad y la crítica feminista, que sitúa la experiencia de la discapacidad en el contexto de los derechos y las exclusiones. Este modelo social de la discapacidad critica el modelo biomédico que concibe la discapacidad como anormalidad y patología, como error de un orden natural dado. Para deconstruir este sujeto naturalizado se analiza una de las representaciones históricas de la discapacidad: la figura del monstruo. Por último, (...) se propone la discapacidad como ocasión para pensar la vulnerabilidad esencial de todo sujeto. (shrink)

Investigating the causes of unethical behaviors in academia, such as scientific misconduct, has become a highly important research subject. The current performance measurement practices (e.g., equating research performance with the number of publications in top-tier journals) are frequently referred to as being responsible for scientists’ unethical behaviors. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders of the higher education system (e.g., professors and policy makers; N = 43) to analyze the influence of performance measurement on scientists’ behavior. We followed a (...) three-step coding procedure and found (1) that the participants described a variety of positive behavioral consequences (e.g., higher productivity) but mainly negative behavioral consequences (e.g., questionable publishing practices) of current performance measurement practices in academia; (2) that scientists’ behavior can be described as gaming performance measurement (i.e., achieving performance goals by reducing performance quality and focusing on those tasks that are measured); and (3) that gaming performance measurement shares the same characteristics as deviant workplace behavior (i.e., a voluntary violation of organizational norms that harms the university). We discuss that gaming performance measurement has not been considered as a type of deviant workplace behavior in the previous literature. Furthermore, we draw from research on deviant workplace behavior and goal setting to discuss psychological processes that may underlie gaming performance measurement. Our results indicate the importance of connecting literature on deviant workplace behavior and goal setting to advance our understanding of gaming performance measurement. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the role of several consumers’ cognitive and psychographic traits in their perceptions of retailers’ deceptive practices and the different effects on perceived deception associated with online vis-à-vis in-store shopping. Building on theoretical models of persuasion in consumer behavior, we hypothesize that the antecedents of perceived deception in traditional settings are the same as those on the Internet, while the intensity of the impact of these antecedents differs between the online and the offline environment. Results suggest (...) that the effects of individual’s cognitive traits and risk aversion on perceived deception are more relevant when consumers shop online than when they purchase from traditional stores. Conversely, psychographic traits play a more important role in explaining perceived deception in the traditional shopping context as compared to the online channel. Several theoretical and managerial implications are derived from these findings. (shrink)